Discard Trope: Baby Gender Question

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Created By: Rognik on June 28, 2012 Last Edited By: Freud on July 30, 2014

Baby Gender Question

Is it a boy or a girl?

Name Space:Main

Page Type:Trope

With the recent invention of the ultrasound, a lot about the baby can be told prenatally. One of the side effects of this is that the parents can know the gender of the child beforehand. This has caused a split in expecting parents: some want to know and others don't. This is when this trope gets involved.

In modern settings, this trope starts when the doctor is about to offer the baby's gender to the couple. Typically, one parent will insist on knowing the gender while the other adamantly insists on a surprise, "so long as the baby is healthy." This can start an argument, or the parent who wants to know to come up with wacky schemes to learn the baby's gender.

However, even before this, the question of a baby's gender may come up. Perhaps there are certain old wives' tales that will predict the gender (ie. If the pendulum starts spinning clock-wise, it's a boy). If there are young children, they may discuss the benefits between having a baby brother or a baby sister. In these cases, it usually happens not too long before the actual birth.

In a Flashback episode of The Simpsons when Marge is preganant with Maggie, Bart is sure that the baby will be a boy because, as he tells Lisa, it always goes "boy, girl, boy, girl."

A minor plot point in Charmed while Piper is pregnant with Wyatt for a while. Before then, all the children born in the Halliwell family had been female. In particular, it took Grams her own episode before she accepted her great-grandchild.

In the song "Pregnant Women Are Smug", the answer to this question is, "oh, we know but we aren't telling."

In the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "Genesis", Dr. Crusher asked Data if he wanted to know the gender of Spot's kittens. He mentions the surprise element, at which point we learn that Nurse Ogawa was also pregnant.

A minor plot point in Charmed while Piper is pregnant with Wyatt for a while. Before then, all the children born in the Halliwell family had been female. In particular, it took Grams her own episode before she accepted her great-grandchild.

In a Gilmore Girls episode Sookie and Jackson were expecting their first child. Sookie knew the gender from the ultrasound but Jackson didn't want to know. He even had buttons made saying, "I do not want to know the sex of my baby." Sookie, on the other hand had a shed full of blue things for when the baby comes.

^Feel free to correct it, then. This is Up For Grabs, so I don't care if you edit the body or not.

^^It's only shorter by 3 characters. Both work as redirects to each other, but is it that important that one word is used over the other?

^^^If you can improve the explanation, feel free to share or directly edit. Should there be different categories for different versions of this trope? Maybe have something branch off as a different trope?

Nah, every tv show with a pregnancy storyline seems to have an episode dealing with this.

On Friends Ross convinces himself that Rachel has gone behind his back to find out the sex of the baby, for naming advantages. He finds out, then tells Rachel "now we BOTH know it's a girl". That's how she finds out.

Malcolm In The Middle plays with this in the last episode of a later series: the audience doesn't find out the sex of baby "Jamie" until the next series.

In an episode of Night Court there's a couple who've been told their unborn baby is a boy. Then the baby gets born in the cafeteria and it turns out it's a girl. The father had already bought various boy toys for the baby, including a baby-sized baseball glove.

If someone else doesn't want to grab this trope, I'll update it soon. Meannwhile, I notice that there aren't any hats yet. Does the description need work? Do people think this trope isn't strong enough? I think there are enough varied examples for this to hold its own, but it needs some support. If someone can suggest what would improve this trope, I think it could start to make some progress.

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